"...Clear skies overnight, and, uh, a low of 41 to 46. Beautiful
day tomorrow,
mostly sunny, very pleasant... a high 59 to 64. And Friday pretty nice
-- hazy sun. Continued quite mild, high in the upper sixties.
Clear and 52 degrees at 6:48...

You might think that WCBS, as a station dedicated to news, would adopt
the conservative, authoritarian formats used by countless news
departments around the US and even some of their competitors in New
York. But you'd be wrong: The format at WCBS is fast paced,
up-tempo, and friendly. It starts out with a greeting and weather, and
moves quickly into headline teasers and traffic...

"Among the stories we're
watching.... they're still walking that last mile in the long, looong
New York City newspaper strike... lawyers for the striking pressmen and
for the New York Times and the Daily News are going
over contract language line by line this mooring. The papers still
hoping to publish Sunday .editions.. Art Athens is at the talks
and we'll be hearing from him...

"Good Morning, Jim and Lou...
and I certainly hope everybody's car made it through
last night [Halloween] without too much
of a problem...As you drive in the morning, very, very good
conditions... as you're coming inbound in fact on
that Long Island Expressway, approaching the midtown tunnel...
look at the new Citicorp building... it's like some sort of
futuristic gantry for a rocket launching pad, that silvery orange
building... and by the way on the upper Brooklyn-Queens Expressway,
we're all cleared up southbound... remember yesterday morning we had a
tie-up there all rush-hour long... we're OK now emptying
into Brooklyn from Queens... we'll have a full report right before
seven."

Snappy Pace

Like rock and roll or a classical
stations, all-news outlets have crafted formats to reach their
audiences, and they strive to be interesting and innovative.

"I talked to a fellow ... who said that in his mind, the really
contemporary radio stations in America today were WCBS and WINS,"
says New York Market Radio, Inc's Executive Editor Maurie Webster,
"because they are doing what he personally considers to be the new
things."

"I don't want to say we're 'news jocks'..." reflects WCBS Afternoon
drive anchor Ben Farnsworth. "But basically, ... our job is ... to
present the news in
the most interesting fashion possible. And that means setting things up
in a way that they'll sound good on the air. And our
job is to talk between the reports, the features, the
information... using the weather and other things, much in the way a
disc jockey would in terms of backtiming or in terms of just adding a
little warmth to what we're doing."

"News doesn't necessarily have
to be boring," says Farnsworth. "It shouldn't be boring
in fact, if it's done right. It should be people-oriented because what
people care about is other people. Yes, you might say that
talking about the economy or some other facet of the news can at times
be boring, if it's handled in a boring fashion. But if
it's handled in terms of how people become millionaires or how they
lose their fortunes... then it becomes more interesting. And that's
really .. our job: to cover the news in an interesting fashion, so that
the listener wants to hear it."

Longer Formats, More Features

WCBS works on an hour-long format, broken into two half-hour segments.
Its competitor, WINS, uses 20- and 30-minute schedules, depending
on the time of day. The programming and structure of the two stations
differs substantially.

A newspaper
ad for one of the features typical of WCBS programming throughout the
day.

"It's a one-hour format formally," explains John Wheeling, Manager
of News Operations at WCBS. "But it can also be considered two
half-hour cycles -- sort
of two half-hours that reflect each other... with different
information, but in the same format. WINS, every twenty minutes,
goes into its sounder and it starts anew. Every twenty minutes. And
they'll repeat the same stories... That's the schematic difference
between the two. [At WCBS] we cover stories in much more detail,
and we do a lot less rewriting of wirecopy, ,in-house on stories our
reporters could get to. And we like to think we cover stories in more
depth -- more realistically."

WCBS has a larger staff (enabling it to cover more), and a network
(giving it access to
more features, audio, and big names like Walter Cronkite). The
station runs longer features about medicine, economics
and consumer issues than WINS.

"I think there's a pattern that's developed by most people," says
Wheelings. "It's
like a 20-minute listening cycle. They'll listen for 20 minutes, then
do something else, whether that be television, or another radio station
or a chore or something else... There are a lot of people who
listen all the time and never change the
dial. They have it on, it's registering somewhere deep down,
may in their subconscious. But they're not listening with a careful
ear looking for specific information. Those people have us on
all the time may at the top of the hour listen for ten minutes,
something like that.... the listening patterns are hard to pin down,
they're hard to predict and they're hard to program for. So we have
tried to cover the entire spectrum of listening habits to take care of
all of those different styles of listening, and that's why we work
on a one-hour cycle." (It's interesting to compare WCBS's philosophy to
WINS.)

Rewrites and More Rewrites

Because they can't know when listeners are tuning in, both WCBS and
WINS must repeat stories regularly; having different written versions
and angles becomes essential.

Rewriting stories and creating different versions "is the only thing
that saves us," says Wheeling. "The audience likes to give us the
benefit of the doubt, and is kind in that way, but if we kept feeding
them the same exact thing after an hour they're have the spots
memorized. So, it'scritical that we have different versions of
the same story -- take different things from it: different angles,
different leads, different cuts of actuality [sound bites] -- anything
we can do to make it sound different."

"And, sometimes journalistically it helps because you can't get the
full story in one 45-second spot. With three different 45-second spots,
you can probably get all the information available on that particular
story."

Explicit Timing

Anyone who's listened with WCBS has to be impressed with the
split-second timing heard when hitting the network news or connecting
with the traffic helicopter or remote reporter.

WCBS news
anchor Ben Farnsworth talks about what it's like to be on air at the #1
all-news station in the #1 market.

"The timing has to be very precise at two times: On the
half-hour, and on the hour," explains PM drive anchor Ben
Farnsworth. "It has to be timed to the second on the hour, because we
have network news at 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock, and what have
you -- and that comes precisely on the hour... and then on
the half-hour, we have our own time tones that automatically come on at
exactly (say) 10:30."

"We have other timing that is not critical, but is important.
That exists between commercials, between programs. And by that kind of
timing I mean we can't bunch too many commercials together... we can't
bunch too many features together -- only because it's bad programming
and it doesn't lend itself too well to good listening."

Inside the Anchor Studio

The WCBS
anchor console. (Click to enlarge.)

The WCBS anchor studio is a technological marvel, where anchors sit
facing a sophisticated control board that aggregates functions ranging
from incoming phone lines, live network feeds and alerts, and
helicopter traffic alerts. The spacious studio can accommodate
two anchors and mutliple guests. Though the control board provides a
smorgasbord of information and controls, all heavy technical work is
actually orchestrated by an engineer in an adjoining conrtol room.

Despite the high-tech accouterments, the anchor studio has a
remarkably comfortable feel.

One thing anchors particularly
appreciate about the WCBS studio is that they can work
without wearing headphones. While newscasters at most of
America's stations work with a set of "cans" on their heads (so they
can hear their on-air presence and listen to outcues),
the WCBS setup allows anchors to work headphone-free.

"I have worked with headphones throughout most of my career," says PM
drive anchor Ben Farnsworth. "Here at CBS they have a marvelous system
where we can actually have the monitor on live in the studio. I much
prefer it that way, only because you don't have to wear some kind of
cumbersome thing on your head. I can hear directly when we do a
lot of co-anchoring stuff with another person. You can him or her
directly. You don't have to go through the sound system, and it really
becomes a much more fluid, open kind of newsroom situation --
particularly when you bring other facets in. When you bring in people
for interviews, they don't have to get headphones on. They're confused
enough sitting in front of a microphone... and this makes them feel
like they can relax in their living room . There's a chair there and
there's a mike there, and that's about it."

"The reason it was originally engineered this way was not such much for
news but for talk radio," explains Farnsworth. "CBS used to have a lot
of talk radio
stations, and it was fantastic because you could hear the phone through
the monitor, and they could hear you directly through the mike.
You didn't have to pick up a phone and didn't
have to talk through one of those sqwak boxes."

Deciding What to Cover

With twenty-four hours of all-news programming a day to
generate, and a bustling city to cover, WCBS has a formidable
challenge: Figuring out how to produce the stories and cover the news
that's happening in the Big Apple in a fresh way. News operations
manager John Wheeling says it's always difficult deciding what to cover:

"We have an assignment editor, and we trust that person's
judgement as what is the most important thing to cover -- the most
important eight stories to go out on, out of fifty or five hundred good
possible stories. And it's very difficult. All journalists suffer
these agonizing decisions every day. Especially assignment people.
People involved in these assignments. After a while you begin to learn
what stories you can cover, and what stories you can't really cover
with what you have available... and you have to kind of throw that into
the mix every morning, and decide which
stories are the most efficient and which ones we must cover."

The WCBS
newsroom: A commanding view from the vantage point of the
WCBS producer on duty.

"We'll send reporters out, and we'll change those assignments at the
drop of a hat. Obviously, if a better story breaks, we'll call a
reporter off of what he's doing and put him on that other story. It's a
continuing review of what's going on."

"Generally, the top two or three stories are easy," says Wheeling.
"You'll know which
ones these are. It's what you do with the other four
or five reporters that you have... how do you get your best use
out of them for that particular day. That just comes from experience.
You know what reporters you have available, how they can handle a
story, what they can do with a story. Sometimes, it's just a
gut level instinct: The assignment editor will feel 'I know there's a
story here, and I'm gonna put somebody on it,' and hopefully, that pans
out. But, you never really know. It's a difficult thing to do. We have
daybook material. We have some future files,
and of course we rely on all the daily services, the wire services and
so forth to get leads for stories."

New York is a Tough City for Covering News

"Covering news in New York City is a very difficult thing to do," says
Wheeling, "because of the nature of this town, its complexity, and the
difficulty of getting around in this town. One of the things that's
very important for a reporter at WCBS is to known New York City. Very
basically: The subway system, how to get a taxicab. Buses. How to get
around in this town. The other thing about knowing New
York City are the intricacies of its government: What makes the city
work, how it works. The commissions, the structure of the government,
and the various committees and boards and everything else. Also, the
personalities that they're going to be confronted with every day."

"So, we don't really look to the midwest to hire a New York City
reporter, because there's a certain amount of time that that person --
even though he or she may be a terrific journalist -- is going to
to be
trained: Basic training. Here in New York City. That can last
six months to a year. Maybe longer. So we would much rather go
to someone who has been working in town, for a long enough time
to really know the city, so they can perform for us from day one. So
there's no training period."

"Disasters Are Where We Shine"

News listenership grows markedly during disasters or weather
emergencies, and all-news stations
are well prepared with standard operating procedures for
emergencies.

"[A big disaster] is what we live
for -- that's when we really shine," admits Wheeling.
"And, it's a good thing. A disaster is a good think for us: That
sounds terrible, but that's the nature of the business. We know when
there's a disaster -- when there's a really big story
-- we're gonna have more listeners than we are gonna have any other
time. So, we pull all the stops at that time... The thinking [is] that
if these people like what they hear... if they're satisfied... well,
they will come back when there is not a disaster. They'll come back
tomorrow because they like what they heard. So, it's an opportunity to
get a whole new group of listeners -- to convince a whole group of
people
that we can do what we claim to do, and that's news better than anyone
else."

Demographics: "Everybody"

In November, 1977, WCBS ranks as the #1 all-news
station in the city.

"They go back and fourth between forth and fifth in the ratings
overall," says Associated Press New York broadcast bureau chief Mike
Collins. "WINS [the rival all-news station] could be on top next time."

So, what audience is WCBS targeting with its rich features and
fast-paced news coverage?

"We're aiming for everybody we
can get actually," quips News Operations Chief John Wheeling.
"But demographically it's general male, 18+. That's the
most valuable demographic as far as we're concerned. Of course,
we're always looking for women especially in the mid-day periods when
that male demographic is not necessarily available to listen
to the radio. So, generally you could say it's men and women 18+,
seven days a week."

As the #1 all-news station in the #1 market in the country, WCBS seems
to have hit its mark.

About this
report
This research documentary is Copyright 1979, 2002 Martin
Hardee - All Rights Reserved. (read more...) Material
may
be quoted or excerpted for non-profit research purposes without
additional special permission. For additional information email martin
@ hardee.net.